Extreme left...generally do veer into authoritarianism, however, because the "ideal" system ends up needing to have to be enforced.

Taken from Chomsky's preface to Antologija Anarhizma:

The world's two great propaganda systems are united in the doctrine that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors, and others that draw from that experience, are "socialist." The reason for this unusual convergence in the Agitprop of the superpowers and colonized intellectuals elsewhere are plain enough. For leadership of the so-called "socialist states," the pretense serves to legitimate their rule, allowing them to conceal their own often brutal practice as they destroy every vestige of genuine socialism. For the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and others who adopted the Leninist model serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the state capitalist institutions, the only perceived alternative to the "socialist" dungeon.

In reality, the Bolsheviks set out at once, on achieving the state power, to destroy the rich potential of the instruments of the popular struggle and liberation created in revolutionary Russia, the Soviets and the factory councils in particular, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders - exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxemburg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood. Lenin called for "unquestioning submission to a single will" and demanded that "in the interests of socialism" the leadership must assume "dictatorial powers" over the workers who must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the process," proceeding to transform the society into a labor army, eliminating any vestige of workers control and the "factionalism" that could permit free expression, independent thought and meaningful organization.

I suppose you dismiss out of hand anything to do with anarchist socialism (or liberal socialism/libertarian socialism/etc.,?)

Dismiss out of hand how? If you are asking if I think left-anarchism or libertarian socialism or whatever you would like to call it is inherently despotic, I would say that I think that appropriating private property is wrong, but I doubt those systems would be as terrible as a traditionally socialist or fascist state.

So I deduced that you meant to dismiss any anti-state type of socialism as not "true socialism." Since I couldn't be sure without asking first, however, I decided to request your confirmation. See exhibit B.

Originally Posted by Orangey

I suppose you dismiss out of hand anything to do with anarchist socialism (or liberal socialism/libertarian socialism/etc.,?)

Originally Posted by pure_mercury

If you are asking if I think left-anarchism or libertarian socialism or whatever you would like to call it is inherently despotic, I would say that I think that appropriating private property is wrong, but I doubt those systems would be as terrible as a traditionally socialist or fascist state.

No, that's not what I was asking. Libertarian socialism is not "inherently despotic," and if you thought so, I woudn't care to hear whatever cockamamie reasoning you could have conjured to come to that conclusion anyway.

I was (and am still) interested in this notion of "true socialism" that you mentioned. If you think that "true socialism" tends towards despotism, and you also think that libertarian socialism does not, then I have to conclude that you think libertarian socialism is not "true socialism." Why?

Well, you said that "true socialism" tends to despotism. See here in exhibit A.

And I would hold to that. However, I did NOT say "socialism is as inherently despotic as fascism," which she quoted me as saying. I take issue with that.

So I deduced that you meant to dismiss any anti-state type of socialism as not "true socialism." Since I couldn't be sure without asking first, however, I decided to request your confirmation. See exhibit B.

I guess a more accurate way of phrasing that would have been "traditional socialism," meaning "state ownership and control of the means of production." I am a stickler for precision in words. A welfare state is not (necessarily) socialist. I would need to examine the structure (or lack thereof) to make a decision.

No, that's not what I was asking. Libertarian socialism is not "inherently despotic," and if you thought so, I woudn't care to hear whatever cockamamie reasoning you could have conjured to come to that conclusion anyway.

Again, I am not the one who said socialism and fascism were inherently despotic. I said they tend to despotism.

I was (and am still) interested in this notion of "true socialism" that you mentioned. If you think that "true socialism" tends towards despotism, and you also think that libertarian socialism does not, then I have to conclude that you think libertarian socialism is not "true socialism." Why?

I guess a more accurate way of phrasing that would have been "traditional socialism," meaning "state ownership and control of the means of production." I am a stickler for precision in words. A welfare state is not (necessarily) socialist. I would need to examine the structure (or lack thereof) to make a decision.

despotism is inevitable in all authoritarian and left wing countries. the system is designed to suppress the ambitions and power of anyone who reaches past a certain point, but those who are able to beat the system will become it's dictators. the system controls the public, the dictator controls the system. to control people's income, livelihood and the entire economy of a country takes tremendous amounts of power, power centered in the hands of a handful of individuals. do you actually trust any kind of authority with that kind of power? you shouldn't. it draws the most vile, corrupt people imaginable. people who wish to control the lives of others and enslave them to their will. freedom with responsibility is better than servitude without responsibility.

What use is responsibility without resources? Go back to the text books and work that one out.

I suppose you dismiss out of hand anything to do with anarchist socialism (or liberal socialism/libertarian socialism/etc.,?)

I think those prefixes and stuff are moronic and piss me off. I remember William Morris attacking the en vogue in his day for so called anarchist communism, describing on one occasion that he'd no need to prefix the word communist with anything.

Orwell did the witty and creative thing of stating that he was in favour of socialism as I understand it which didnt mean that he may have been mistaken about it but that he had a particular perspective which he could call socialist but you would have to pay attention to his writing as a complete whole to know what he understood by that word. Which I like.

Without EVER having dreamt of something such as libertarian socialism GDH Cole created a body of theory after reading William Morris' News from Nowhere and Robert Owen's books which owed more to Edwardian Liberalism than anything else and considered not material disparities in wealth and poverty per se as the greatest foes of socialism but servility. I like to think he'd have scoffed at the idea of libertarian socialism too, liberty is so much part of the program it really ought to go without saying, and I just know for sure that he'd have been surprised at the extent to which basic norms, such as personal responsibility or work ethics, have been co-opted by conservatives and libertarians and the extent to which socialists have let them do so.

The ideas which form the body of geo-libertarianism or henry george libertarianism for instance only got an airing at all until lately in the early anti-bolshevik socialist literature in the UK, GDH Cole revisited some of it when he attacked the welfare state and the new stratification it heralded which he felt made socialism as he understood it, a classless society without servility, less of a prospect. Yes that's right he, a socialist, felt that weflarism was a greater obsticle to socialism than the free market capitalism which preceeded it!